4.  The applicant was born in 1938 and lives in Cunski, Mali Losinj, Croatia.
5.  On 7 April 1992 the applicant was arrested in Hungary on the suspicion of having murdered his wife, a German national. On 10 April 1992 the Hungarian Pest Central District Court ordered his detention on remand until his extradition to Germany. On 20 July 1993 the Hungarian National Police Department extradited the applicant and prohibited his return until 20 July 1998. Subsequently, he was held in pre-trial detention in Germany until 19 December 1994.
6.  On 17 February 1995 the German Hildesheim Criminal Court acquitted the applicant. The judgment was pronounced in his presence and became final on the same day.
7.  On 27 October 1995 the applicant’s lawyer brought an action in the Pest Central District Court seeking from the Hungarian State compensation (kártalanítás) under section 385/A of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
8.  On 12 June 1996 the District Court transferred the case to the competent Budapest Regional Court. On 18 December 1996 the Regional Court ordered the applicant to complete his action, which he did on 8 September 1997.
9.  Hearings took place on 11 September 1997, 22 January, 2 June and 8 December 1998, 4 May 1999 and 1 February 2000.
10.  On 6 March 2000 the applicant extended his action and claimed damages (kártérítés) from the Hungarian State, relying on various provisions of the Civil Code.
11.  On 28 April 2000 the Regional Court discontinued the proceedings, holding that the action had been submitted outside the statutory time-limit, as calculated from the final decision given in the criminal case.
12.  On 5 June 2000 the applicant appealed. He submits that the respondent’s submissions in reply, filed on 22 June 2000, were made available to him only in autumn 2001, when his lawyer consulted the case file for the purposes of the review proceedings.
13.  On 26 March 2001 the Supreme Court, sitting as a second-instance court, dismissed the applicant’s appeal.
14.  On 8 April 2002 the Supreme Court’s review bench quashed these decisions in their part concerning the claim for damages; this claim was remitted to the first instance court. Moreover, it upheld the discontinuation of the proceedings for compensation. The court observed that the time-limit for introducing this claim had been 17 August 1995 (i.e. six months after the applicant’s acquittal on 17 February 1995); however, the action had only been filed on 27 October 1995. It noted that the applicant – who referred to having been banned from Hungary and prohibited from accessing the Hungarian courts by the war in Croatia, as well as to his stay in a Croatian hospital from 14 August 1995 – should have requested procedural reinstatement (igazolási kérelem) within six months from the removal of these obstacles on 7 August 1995 (the date on which he had retained his Hungarian lawyer). However, the court found that he did so belatedly, only on 22 January 1998. The Supreme Court’s decision was served on the applicant’s lawyer on 25 June 2002.
15.  In the resumed proceedings for damages, on 12 July 2002 the Regional Court joined to this case another action which the applicant had filed against the Budapest Police Department on 4 October 2000, claiming damages for the alleged breach of the presumption of innocence in the criminal proceedings.
16.  On 21 March 2003 the court requested the competent German authorities to make available to it copies of documents relating to the applicant’s case, which they did on 20 November 2003. After the translation of the documents had been effected, a hearing took place on 20 May 2004.
17.  On 12 October 2004 the court dismissed the entirety of the applicant’s action as time-barred. It observed that the criminal proceedings in Hungary had ended on 20 July 1993 and the applicant’s pre-trial detention in Germany on 19 December 1994. Consequently, the statutory five-year time-limit on the introduction of claims for damages had started on 20 December 1994 at the latest and ended on 20 December 1999. The applicant’s claims for damages, filed in March and October 2000, were therefore statute-barred. On 7 December 2004 the applicant appealed.
18.  On 10 March 2005 the Budapest Court of Appeal, in a partial decision, partly upheld and partly quashed the first-instance decision. It instructed the first-instance court to resume the examination of that part of the applicant’s claims which concerned an alleged violation by the State of his ‘personality rights’ (személyiségi jogsérelem; non-pecuniary damage claimed in the amount of 67 million Hungarian forints (HUF)) and by the Police Department (non-pecuniary damage claimed in the amount of HUF 134 million).
19.  On 17 November 2005 the Supreme Court upheld, in review proceedings, the partial decision.
20.  The proceedings were resumed in respect of the claims not yet determined, and are still pending.